David in the kitchen.

Emergency baking

‘I did tell you I was going to be out for most of the day, didn’t I?’

‘No, I don’t think so’

‘In which case I’m guessing I forgot to tell you I’ve promised Claire one of your cakes’

‘You definitely didn’t tell me that’

‘Is it too late if I’m telling you now?’

So went the breakfast conversation in our house this morning. A precursor to some emergency baking.

It’s always good to have a quick and reliable bake in your repertoire, and for me, a Victoria sponge is always my go-to if time if tight. Minimal ingredients, short cooking time and a final product which never fails to please. I know I’ve written about this particular type of cake before, but just in case they’re new to you a Victoria is a very light sponge made with butter, sugar, eggs and flour. These are whisked together to create the batter, this is then poured into two tins for baking. Once baked and cooled the two halves of the sponge are sandwiched together with jam, cream and if you’re feeling extravagant some fruit as well. It’s a style of cake first championed by Queen Victoria as part of the afternoon teas she liked to indulge in.

This morning we had no butter or fruit in the house, so it meant a quick trip to the local store before back to the kitchen. The next problem was how do you get butter just out of a store chiller unit up to the required room temperature. If I have time I’ll leave it on a window sill in the sun, but that clearly wasn’t going to work this morning. My only option was to sit it in the oven, already heating up to the required baking temperature, for a few minutes. I have done this before, but you have to be so careful as a moment too long will see your butter turning to liquid and leave it unusable in a cake.

Once the butter was softened the two cake tins were soon filled with batter and in the oven baking for the required twenty minutes. They were out by just after 11:00 and the next worry was would they cool in time, allowing me to assemble and decorate the cake before the planned noon departure time.

It’s only when you want a cake to cool that you realise just how long it takes. I threw windows open, I stood over the cakes fanning them, but for two thin, light sponges they packed an awful lot of heat. It was 11:40 by the time they were anywhere near ready, just enough time to spread the jam. whip the cream and add the blueberries. I’d normally go for raspberries out of preference but there were none to be had this morning.

The top of the cake was finished off with icing sugar, a few edible petals, and everything was in a cakebox with minutes to spare.

The bottom line is I’m never going to moan about the chance to bake, but maybe a bit more forewarning next time.

Bake Off is coming back

So apparently there is going to be a Great British Bake Off this year after all. The world may feel as if it’s rapidly going to hell in a hand basket, but we will be getting our much needed weekly fix of baking powder and icing sugar. No doubt there will be numerous bonkers baking challenges where the contestants are asked to make things no one has ever heard of. We’ll all moan that they’re being wilfully obscure, only to then start scouring the cookery books so that we can have a go at home.

I’d long since convinced myself that GBBO would be going the same way as so many other annual events and just be written off as far as 2020 was concerned. Somehow the fact it’s going ahead feels like the most positive news I’ve heard in quite some time.

The specific date for the new series hasn’t been announced yet but the ‘coming soon’ trailers have started to appear on Channel 4, so I would guess the cry of ‘let’s bake’ should be going up in about a couple of weeks.

Last year I did have a few reservations about the direction the show seemed to be heading in. The challenges seemed more obscure than normal and the marking and comments of the judges verged on the unnecessarily harsh on quite a few occasions. I put much of this down to the fact that the skill levels of the contestants just gets better and better with each year that goes by, but I still hope they don’t lose sight of the fact that virtually everyone watching or taking part is an enthusiastic amateur. However much some of us may dream about taking it further.

For the last series, I set myself the task of baking at least one of the show’s challenges from each week and then posting about it here. I’ll be doing it again this year and will also make sure to include the recipe details so that anyone who happens to stumble across my posts can join in as well if they want.

Following the show can certainly lead you in some unexpected and unusual baking direction. I would never have made a gateau vert if it wasn’t for GBBO and although there were a few ‘why am I doing this ‘ moments during the lengthy baking time, the final results made it all worthwhile.

Another unexpected pleasure from the last series was fig rolls. I’d always dismissed them as a strange biscuit/cake hybrid which were always on the table if you went to your grandparents for tea. Then they cropped up as a challenge, I baked some, and now they’re a regular in this house as everyone seems to enjoy them.

So dust off your rolling pin and get your apron ready. It will soon be time to bake.

A beetroot revelation

There aren’t many things I won’t eat, or at least won’t make an effort with, and now the list is even shorter after the revelation that was beetroot hummus.

Up until last weekend, beetroot was a no go area for me. It’s an aversion which stretches back to childhood and the memories of horribly acidic pickled beetroot. There was always a jar of it on the table if we went for tea at my grandparents and it was awful. I remember an unpleasant texture in the mouth and an even worse taste. Once you also factor in the unappetising colour and the risk of the juice staining anything it comes into contact with, it’s hardly surprising I was put off for life.

For years avoiding beetroot was quite easy, but recently it’s seemed to be going through a distinct revival. The advent of so much more vegetarian and vegan food has played a big part in this. I Googled beetroot recipes before starting to write this and was offered baked, roasted, curried and even some cake options. Now I’ve had my hummus moment I might just be tempted by some of them.

The reason my guard fell and beetroot found its way into the house is that we signed up to a veg box scheme during lockdown. A box of organic goodies turns up on the doorstep once a fortnight and it’s been quite a lifesaver in recent months. Other than the guarantee there will be some potatoes you never know what to expect the box will contain and this time there were four beetroots.

To be honest if it was up to me they would probably have sat at the back of the fridge slowly going soft, at which point I’d have quietly thrown them out while no one was looking. It wasn’t to be though. my partner is made of sterner stuff than me, she went looking for options to use them up and decided on hummus.

This is the recipe she used:

Ingredients

50g Walnuts
1 tbsp cumin seeds
25g stale bread
200g cooked beetroot..cut into cubes
1 tbsp tahini paste
I garlic clove..crushed
Juice of a lemon
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4.
Put the walnuts on a tray and roast them for 5 minutes
Dry fry the cumin seeds in a small frying pan over a moderate heat. Don’t do this for too long as you don’t want them to burn. Once fried grind the seeds in a pestle and mortar.
Break the bread into small chunks and put it into a food processor along with the walnuts. Blitz until fine. Add the beetroot, tahini, most of the garlic, most of the cumin, lemon juice, salt & pepper, then blend to a thick paste.
Taste and add a little more of the ingredients if you feel it needs it. If it seems too thick add a little olive oil

We ate it spread on flatbreads, but it would also work in sandwiches or as part of any salad you may be having.

This experience had made me wonder if I should be revisiting some of the other things I’ve decided down the years I don’t like. Perhaps the fluorescent jar of piccalilli which used to sit alongside the beetroot on grandma’s table wasn’t so bad after all.

The hummus was all gone before I thought to grab a picture to go with this post. Instead you have a graffiti aubergine. Far and away the best looking vegetable that any of our selection boxes have contained.

Baking a cake for other people

My partner is taking her mother out tomorrow morning to visit some friends and I’ve been asked to bake a cake for them. A cake that’s going to be cut into and eaten when I’m not there. I don’t think this has ever happened before and it’s making me distinctly nervous.

As they want to be off quite early I decided I’d make the cake this afternoon and then assemble it with the fruit and cream tomorrow morning. They’ve requested a Victoria sponge, one of my go-to bakes, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour or so. I make these so often, normally it’s all done from memory, the recipe book left safely tucked away on the shelf. Today was different though, I felt the need to double-check every ingredient amount, make sure they were being added in the right sequence, reassure myself I had the cooking time exactly right. I even felt the need to check on exactly what the finished product should look like when it came out of the oven. In my mind, I suddenly felt like a novice baker again.

Don’t get me wrong, It’s not that I don’t enjoy baking for other people, completely the opposite, watching peoples faces light up as they eat and share something I’ve made is a wonderful feeling. It’s just this time I won’t be there to see those faces, won’t know if I’ve got it right and whether they’re enjoying it. I suppose there’s always a chance they will bring me a slice home if there’s any left. However, I’d probably start worrying they didn’t finish it as they didn’t like it if that were to happen.

I know I’ll have to get used to this if baking is going to become as big a part of my life as I want it to be. In my dreams, I’d like to reach a stage where I’m sending cakes off in all directions.

For now though, my big worry is how stressed I’m going to get tomorrow when it comes to putting things together. Making sure the cream has been whipped to just the right consistency and the strawberries cut just so.

I went back into a coffeeshop.

I went back into a coffeeshop last week for the first time in about four months. That’s back in as to actually order a coffee, sit down, sip, savour and finally leave feeling that perhaps the world isn’t quite such a bad place after all.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t my first time back across a coffeeshop threshold. I’ve had one or two takeaways since they started to reopen and also taken advantage of the alfresco option some are offering. This time it was the real deal though, the full immersive experience.

At the moment I’m only venturing into the centre of Norwich once a week and even them I’m not always sure I’m enjoying it. There’s only so much mask-wearing and sanitiser applying before the inevitable ‘why am I doing this’ question creeps into your mind, ‘why didn’t I stay at home with my book and a coffee’.

On my previous trip, I’d been sorely tempted to go in, but in the end, something held me back, still struggling with that lockdown frame of mind.

This time I was determined to do it and I’m so glad I did. I opted for Bread Source on Bridewell Alley. As their wonderful home delivery service has helped to keep me sane through lockdown it seemed only appropriate, and what perfect timing it was. At 10 o’clock last Thursday morning it was just me and their ever welcoming staff. The seating options have inevitably been reduced due to current circumstances but with free rein of the shop, it didn’t matter at all. I bagged one of my favourite seats by the window, the coffee was just as strong as I like it and a pasteis de nata was the perfect sweet accompaniment. I sat there happily watching the world go by, listening to some rather cool music they were playing and occasionally dipping into the book I’d bought earlier that morning. Things were good, so good in fact that I forgot to ask what the music was. Maybe I’ll have to go back in tomorrow and hope they were playing a Thursday playlist.

Discovering flourless cake.

I took a step into the unknown yesterday with my first attempt at a flourless cake.

I’ve already mentioned it was my partners birthday a couple of days ago and she rounded off a weekend of celebrations when she had friends over for lunch in our garden. The meal was arranged at very short notice, the cake I’d made on her birthday long gone, so I had to look at options needing minimal preparation time. Partly because they were arriving quite early, but also due to the fact the weather is so hot at the moment I’m trying to spend as little time as possible in a hot kitchen. It’s not often you’ll hear me say that.

I’d seen a recipe for a flourless cake a few weeks back and been intrigued by the concept, when I checked it again yesterday it ticked all the boxes I was looking for and I’m here to tell you it was one of the most indulgent things I’ve ever baked. If I were to describe it as a cross between a chocolate brownie and a chocolate fondant you’ll hopefully get the picture. A cake that was crisp and firm on the outside, getting progressively gooier and fudge-like the further you ate into it.

A cake so soft possibly wasn’t the cleverest thing to serve al-fresco on one of the hottest days of the year, I had to quickly return the part not being eaten to the fridge, but otherwise, it was a great success.

If my description tempts anyone to have a go at making this cake I would seriously recommend serving with a scoop of good vanilla ice-cream. I always find if you have a very rich dessert the ice-cream somehow takes the edge off. That’s my excuse anyway.

I made quite a small cake but this is an easily scalable recipe if you did want to increase it.

Ingredients

125g butter
125g dark chocolate – chopped
1tsp coffee – ideally espresso strength, but use whatever you have
3 eggs – yolk & whites separated
30g cocoa powder

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4. Grease and line a springform tin. The one I used was 16cm.
Put the butter and chocolate in a heatproof glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. Once it is nearly all melted, stir the mixture until smooth and then set aside to cool.
Mix the coffee with 25ml of oblige water and set aside.
Put the egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and mix with an electric beater until pale and thick. Then stir in the chocolate mixture, coffee and cocoa powder.
In another bowl whisk the egg whites to soft peaks. Then gently fold the whipped egg whites into the chocolate mixture.
Pour int the lined tin and bake for approximately 25 minutes. When you take the cake out it should be risen but still wobble slightly when you move the tin. Leave to cool in the tin.

As the cake cools it will sink in the middle. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do this. Look at it as bakings way of providing you with a perfect dip to fill with a cream and creme fraiche mixture topped off with whatever fruit you have available. In my case, it was strawberries, raspberries and cherries.

My Saturday baking

Some days are for full-blown baking projects, others are more a case of checking what you’ve got in the kitchen, then deciding what to bake. Today is straddling both camps.

We have another birthday coming up in the house and I’m back on cake making duty. This one defiantly falls into the project camp. A couple of weeks ago I made a tiramisu birthday cake and although I’m not repeating the whole thing I am going to make the genoise sponge that formed the base of it. I find a genoise forms the perfect first block of a celebratory cake. It’s light and delicate texture is ideal for adding cream, fruit and other indulgent things. I once saw it described as the little black dress of the cake world, perfect for accessorising. That may be a little over the top but I know where they were coming from.

The cake is named after the Italian city of Genoa and associated primarily with Italian and French cuisine. Ingredients wise it couldn’t be more straight forward, consisting of just flour, sugar, butter and eggs. There’s no additional raising agent involved as the process is all about getting as much air as possible into the batter as you make it.

The first step is to melt some butter in a saucepan and then set it aside to cool. Next, the eggs and sugar are combined in a bowl and whisked to bring them together. Then it’s a case of keeping going for at least another 10 minutes, you do need an electric whisk for this. You’re looking to get the mix to a consistency where if you lift the whisk out, any that drizzles back into the bowl sits on top of the mixture for a few seconds before slowly sinking back in.

Once this has been achieved the flour is sieved into the batter and then gently folded into the mixture. Gentle is the word here as you are trying to keep as much as possible of the air which you have created with the whisking. I find it easier to add the flour in about three stages. Finally pour in the melted butter and fold again. It’s then a case of spooning the mixture into a lined tin and baking for approximately 25 minutes in an oven that’s been preheated to gas mark 6.

I’ll be making one of these later this afternoon and if anyone fancies a bake along you’ll need 4 eggs, 40gm of butter and 125gm each of plain flour and caster sugar.

Todays ‘check, then decide bake’ was when I made some bread this morning. I’d had a request for some ‘picnic’ bread as the plan is to take advantage of the current heatwave and eat outside this evening. A quick check of the kitchen came up with some walnuts and blue cheese and the results are going to be eaten soon

Ingredients

This makes one small loaf. Double everything up if you want something more substantial.

225gm Strong White Bread flour
25gm Wholemeal Bread flour
5gm dried yeast
5gm salt
175ml warm water
50gm chopped walnuts…if you don’t have walnuts most others can be substituted for them
50gm diced blue cheese… if you don’t have, or don’t like blue cheese, use whatever you have.

Method

Combine the flour, yeast and salt in a bowl and mix. Add the water and knead for a few minutes until a firm dough is forming. Add the walnuts and continue kneeing until fully combined.
Let the dough prove in a warm place for approximately 90 minutes.
After the first prove stretch the dough out to a rectangle. Don’t go too thin as it will split. Sprinkle the cheese over the stretched dough. Then starting from one of the long sides of the rectangle roll the dough up so that all of the cheese is inside. Twist the rolled dough into a spiral and place it on a baking tray, leave to prove for another hour.
Preheat the oven to gas mark 7 and bake for approximately 35 minutes.

Going back to Thurcroft

If these last strange three months have taught me anything it’s just how important the senses are, even when you’re not necessarily using them. How just the thought of a smell, a taste or the feel of something can bring back memories, taking you to a time or place you’d thought long forgotten.

Much of my lockdown has been spent in the kitchen and there’s nothing quite like cooking and baking for creating a sensory overload. The cake that smells like the chocolate sponge with vanilla icing mum used to make, which of course leads to the taste of the spoon of cake mixture she’d let you have just before it went into the oven. The first slice of a freshly baked loaf, smelling just like your favourite bakery. If only you could bottle eau de fresh baked bread. The baked fish with lemon, garlic, and herbs which has you back at the Italian beachside cafe before it’s even out of the oven. It isn’t only food doing this though, this morning I pulled a clean tee-shirt over my head and the freshly laundered smell took me straight back to being a nervous schoolboy getting ready for his P.E lesson, worrying about what the next hour was going to bring.

I’ve seen lots of people on Twitter recently saying how one of their lockdown coping mechanisms has been to take themselves on virtual holidays. To take themselves off somewhere without actually leaving home. I’ve done my share of this, you might be surprised to find out just how many times I’ve been to Paris in recent weeks. Mainly though it’s been virtual time travel for me, sparked by my senses. Sensory memories taking me back to childhood moments. None more so than those I associate with my grandmother’s house. They take me back to Thurcroft. The Yorkshire pit village where my dad grew up.

Grandad was a coal miner, I can hear Dolly Parton singing that line, and all of my childhood visits were to their Coal Board owned house. As with the last sentence, coal was everywhere in Thurcroft. The giant slag heap at the pit head could be seen from my grandparent’s garden and when the wind blew it left a grey patina over everything. A residue which came off on your fingers if you touched something. It could be so bad that I remember my grandmother would always check what direction the wind was blowing in before deciding on whether to hang any washing on the line. If she got it wrong anything white would be grey by the time it came in.

It wasn’t just the residue that coal left on everything, you could smell and taste it as well. Every house in the village used to receive free deliveries from the pit, these would be dumped on the pavement from a flat back lorry. There were no sacks, just a pile of freshly hewn coal which had to be shovelled into a wheelbarrow before being trundled to the coal bunker in the back garden. I’m sure if you lived there this was a laborious task and that when you got home from the pit the last thing you wanted to do was move more coal. But if the delivery day happened to coincide with us staying there it was the most exciting thing ever. A chance to get ridiculously dirty as I helped to move it. Although looking back I’m sure I was more of a hindrance than a help as clambering up coal mountain always turned out to be more fun than shovelling. Coal moving always finished with a hot bath and another of the smells unique to Grandma’s house, carbolic soap.

In their house, they had an open coal fire with a cooker built into it and this is where Grandma worked her culinary magic, filling the house with enticing smells of the food we’d all be eating later. Coal fire cooking might conjure the image of an Aga but this was nowhere near as sophisticated. To this day I’ve no idea how you control the heat in a coal fired oven but it was an art which Grandma had off to perfection. Roasting, baking, it all went on in there and to a greedy grandson’s mind they all came out tasting delicious. She knew that I adored her egg custard, honed to just the right consistency, topped with a sprinkling of grated nutmeg, and there always seemed to be one on the table.

Mealtimes were always a big event in her house, but it’s only looking back I realise I seldom saw her eat anything. I’m sure she did but for her, the priority was all about feeding others. Making sure everyone else was happy and content.

Then there’s tobacco. I haven’t smoked for many years but I was watching a documentary the other evening about Miles Davis and getting completely sidetracked by just how cool some people can make smoking look. While I’d hesitate to claim coolness for my grandparents, it was a train of thought which soon led back to Thurcrofft again as everyone seemed to be a heavy smoker. Neither of my parents did, so the smell of tobacco was always a uniquely grandma and grandad thing, even more so when they enveloped you in it with a hug. There was always a slight difference in the smell they left behind as grandad more often than not opted for a pipe rather than cigarettes. The ritual of cleaning and lighting the pipe seeming every bit as important as the actual smoking of it.

To this day I can still see my mother’s disapproving looks at the ornate ashtrays they had around the house. My favourites were models of small, hollow out buildings. There was a gap at the front and this was where you either flicked the ash or placed your still burning cigarette, if you did the later smoke rose through the hollow building and out through the chimney. If I ever saw one in an antique or bric-a-brac shop I’d be very tempted to buy one. Sorry, mum.

It’s at least forty years now since I was last in Thurcroft. Both of my grandparents are long gone and I don’t think I’ve got any family left in the area. The pit has gone as well, it survived for a few years after the miners’ strike but finally closed in 1990. There are parts of me that would be interested to see what’s become of the village, but with no slag heaps and no coal mountains to climb it’s going to be a very different place to the one I remember. I think I’ll stick with time travel and the hope of one day making an egg custard that tastes just like Grandma used to make.

The photo with this piece was taken in Thurcroft around about 1950 and shows a shop that my great grandparents had. I know little about it, but writing this has left me keen to find out more.

Saturday afternoon in the garden.

Saturday afternoon and I’m sat in the garden having a first attempt at alfresco writing. Things have been a bit thin on the blog front recently so I thought I’d have a bit of a catchup. I didn’t get around to any writing for a few days after my last post, then I had to get a piece together for the final session of the creative writing course I’ve been doing, and before I know it there hasn’t been anything new on here for a couple of weeks.

The course is complete and just in case my tutor or fellow students happen to read this I wanted to say how much I enjoyed it. When it became apparent all sessions were going to be Zoom based I did have my doubts about going ahead, but in the end, it’s been a huge success. Two hours of interactions and exchanging of ideas each Thursday morning has been a beacon over the last fourteen weeks and I will miss it.

At the end of the course, we all submitted pieces of work for feedback from the group. I don’t think I’ve been so nervous about something I’ve written since I was handing in homework when I was at school. Except perhaps for the time that my dad found out, I’d started blogging and asked for a link so he could have a read of it. In the end, it was a very positive experience and after a final polish and edit based on the comments I received from the group I’ll share it here as a later post.

In other news, we had a birthday in the house last week. My partner’s son turned 30 and came home from London for a celebration. While his mum wanted to do most of the cooking for him I was allocated birthday cake duties. Given free rein, and on the understanding there would be no telling off for using too much cream, I opted for a Tiramisu cake. Three layers of light genoise sponge, each layer drizzled with strong coffee. Between these a filling of cream, mascarpone and Marsala wine, the whole thing topped with more of the same and finished with grated dark chocolate and cherries. Fabulously indulgent and if I’ve whetted anyone’s appetite with the description I’ll make sure to post the full recipe soon. Typing that has given me an idea, perhaps I’ve found a reason to make another, I could claim to be checking the recipe before I post it.

A side note to the birthday cake is my sudden realisation you can’t put candles on them anymore. It would rather have spoilt all the social distancing and elbow bumping if he’d been offered the chance to blow all over the cake before we ate it. Hopefully, they’ll be back next year. There again we may decide it wasn’t the cleverest of ideas in the first place.

One last thing to tell you is my summer of al fresco coffee moved on a step yesterday. Up until now, the only coffee’s I have had out since lockdown easing started have been takeaways. A quick, masked venture into a coffee shop, followed by an equally quick retreat to drink elsewhere. Yesterday was different though. On the hottest day of the year so far in the UK, I went to the spacious gardens of the Assembly House here in Norwich for perfectly safe, perfectly distanced coffee and cake. The whole thing was wonderful and felt like a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ moment.

So that’s what’s been happening and if the weather stays good I think you might be getting a few more updates from the garden. I can recommend alfresco writing.

I finally got to ask for a black Americano again

I had somebody else make me a cup of coffee for the first time in three months last weekend. My fist interaction with a barista in a very long time. It might not have been the full sit down coffeeshop experience I’ve long pined for but it was the first step back in in the right direction.

A few posts ago I wrote about how I don’t really feel ready to take advantage of some of the lockdown loosening that’s been happening and to a large extent it’s still how I feel. It hasn’t been helped by today’s announcement that as of next week the UK will finally catch up with large parts of Europe and and the rest of the world when it makes the wearing of face masks mandatory in all shops. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I’m opposed to wearing masks if they help in the current situation. It’s just that suddenly telling me I have to wear one in shops does feel to clash a bit with the corresponding message that pubs, bars and restaurants, where clearly you’re not going to wear a mask, are safe places to be. Maybe it’s me being paranoid but it feels as if we’re drowning in a sea of mixed messages at the moment.

So for now I think I’ll stick with a coffee to go and ideally a Danish with it. It’s going to be an alfresco coffee summer. Last Saturday’s came from the rather wonderful Cross Street Union in Holt* and after three months it was good to finally ask for a black Americano again.

*After Holt we went onto the beautiful North Norfolk village of Cley next the Sea and that’s where I took the photo with this post.